The Washington Post Names Best of 2017

Oh, it's that time of the year again when we start to make the "best of" rounds. We'll start the season off with Elizabeth Lund's picks published yesterday at the Washington Post. Lund's best-of-the-best list includes books by Mary Oliver, Danez Smith, Maggie Smith, Frank Bidart, and Layli Long Soldier. Since it's a big Bidart day, we'll see what Lund has to say about his collection, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016. And since you're a faithful Harriet reader, you know the book won the National Book Award, right? Of course you did!

Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

By Frank Bidart (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

This collection highlights Bidart’s enduring themes and concerns, among them: desire and shame and the quest to find truth and freedom. His ability as a storyteller fuels many of these pieces, including his dramatic monologues about child murderer Herbert White, an anorexic woman named Ellen West and other unsettling figures. The speaker also looks unflinchingly at his own life and at the people who have shaped his perceptions, from his stifling mother and alcoholic father to the men he has loved and lost. The book closes with an ambitious section of new writing.

Read up on the other titles at the Washington Post.